


Oranges

by inmyriadbits



Category: The Fall (2006)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-02
Updated: 2009-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmyriadbits/pseuds/inmyriadbits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many years after the hospital, she finds Roy again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oranges

Many years after the hospital, she finds Roy again.

It is on the street, an everyday sidewalk with cracks, and she is looking too closely at the oleander blossoms (pink and poisonous as lips) to watch her step.

He hits her hip with his shoulder, heading the opposite direction, and the blow spins her a sharp half-turn before she loses her feet. (She loses her feet, and her mind draws reds and sad blues, and two lost feet wander the world alone.) Her packages of painting supplies skitter across the sidewalk, red and blue, lost feet among passing shoes.

She hears his voice say "Oh, damn, I am so sorry," sees the back of his coat as he bends for the cadmium red. He bends, and then she sees his face, for the first time in twenty years, and for the first time.

She has not forgotten. And he breathes, and keeps his promise.

"Roy," she says, and traces the lines that crease his face and the silver threading his hair gold in sunlight.

(Alchemy, she thinks, and the gold spreads to everything it touches.)

He is startled. He says, "Do I know you?" and she laughs.

"Do you?" she asks, and holds her left arm up in that awkward position. She remembers well.

"Alexandria?" he whispers, and recognition blooms on his face, bright and cheerful as orange.

(It is hard to see bruises on oranges, even old ones. She knows. She knows they are there, and she knows she will not see them, not here on the street with cobalt at her feet. But she is the only one who can see. She knows.)

The cadmium red has burst open, left pigment on the pavement, and it lays in Roy's hands. He reaches out for her, for the hand she holds to her body; he notices the stain.

Alexandria catches him before he can pull away, and the paint smears, and it slides like blood between their fingers.

She holds on, and Roy smiles like oranges.


End file.
